The Last Will and Testament of

Harry Roucheau

This declaration is made this day of   Wednesday in sound mind and body and witnessed by all these lawyers

In the event of my death aw good god, man! Do we have to start it like that?! Like this whole enterprise isn’t enough of a drag?

To my heirs I mean, if this really was my will, man, it should start with a grabber, like, KA-ZAMM! Death comes my way at last at last! This whole form thing really has me in a frown.

Like, what self-respecting artist has a will? You think that’s how Karoac played it? There was no mystery that he was going down hill fast in the health department, and that man had treasures to his name. You know what served for his will? A croaked instruction to his family to "Fight it out." And fight they would.

As for me, I've written four of these goddamned things, man! I’ve been down to this cat’s office four times on the same task! I honestly can't believe it and I’m telling you, not once has the coffee been any good here. Really. I don’t know how these people survive. The only good thing about this place is that this typewriter works great. I don't understand why no one's ever using it.

So why, Harry? Why put yourself through this kind of torture, filling out forms and signing papers and all that? To which I reply, baby, it was never the plan.

But then, you know, a kid shows up at your door, nearly 10 years old and says, “I’m your son.” And after a neatly contained and well-managed nervous breakdown, you go and see the Man, your most trusted and beloved advisor in all things chemical and otherwise. And you tell him what has transpired –- he needs to know so he can give you the proper dosage –- and the Man says, “You’d be wise to scrawl out a will. Seems like the least you could do.” And because it’s coming from the Man you tend to agree – about the wisdom of making out a will, not about it being the least I could do. Because I’ve done much less for most the of the kid’s life, both before and after this encounter. Hey, sorry, Ron, but your mom and me, man, we were positively nuclear together, you know what I mean? Chain reactions. No good.

Then another kid pops up, this one the product of a stint in the desert and a wind-torn girl who lived there. And the kid’s an absolute angel, beautiful and down and unspeakably hip. She appears unto me 20 years old, toting about a videocamera, and going on about how she’s making this movie about finding me and that’s meant to set her life straight.

And that really flips me, man, just knocks me out. We gas each other in my pad for a time, you know, I answer all her questions and that. She sent me a tape of the movie, but I never had the right machine to play it in, so one night I took a pill the Man gave me and unspooled the thing, ran it between my thumb and finger right next to my ear. You’ll laugh when I tell you, but, baby I fell out. Came all unglued. It was an ugly sight, let me tell you, and I was glad I was alone.

So now I’m hip to the process and I contact those who need to be contacted and a few days later I author the second draft of my will that includes my angel.

Then I finally copped the Ford Fairlane I’ve been drooling on getting since 19 and 66. Fastback 500, cream colored, blue/grey tweed interior. I picked her up down Mex off a cat who blew the trumpet in a mariachi band. In my opinion, a Fairlane more than a car – it's a remnant of a world gone by, a world that might be totally forgotten if not for the sight of this beautiful machine rolling down the street. (In the opinion of my mechanic Arnas, it's less than a car because it doesn't always go.) But it's my opinion that matters here, and that meant will numero three needed some ink. I swore up and down Broadway that that was it. No mas!

Now, or as of this year, my doctor has begun saying, “Harry, it’s time to get your affairs in order and plan for the care you’re going to need.” It's the kind of thing people used to say to Kerouac as he was winding down. But Jack was in bad shape, and I feel fine. But the doc tells me I’m wrong, and I disagree, and then we start to argue. It’s all very important to him, but it doesn't resonate. It's certainly not the reason for this the latest rewrite. My affairs are what they are, and whatever care he thinks I’ll need, I won’t.

But a few weeks ago, when I went and did the craziest goddamned thing I ever done. It’s for this and only this we’re sitting here yet again. Four wills. Unbelievable.

So dig it. I was walking through the park on my way to see Nunez when I see a bunch of carriage drivers crowded around this one horse. It's an old bay, looking a little mangy, but all these duded up carriage drivers are gassing her and petting her and all that. So I ask what’s going on and one of them tells me it’s the horse’s last day of work. That’s good news I can dig. I ask what will happen to her. He tells me, “Too old to sell, so it looks like the glue factory.” He doesn’t even try to whisper it. The fate of this beast comes out of his mouth the same as he’d speak the score of a ballgame.

And I look at this horse who spent her mornings fighting rush hour traffic on 8th Avenue just to waste the day pulling tourists around the park, her whole life knocking around on concrete. She’s whipping the flies off her legs with her tail and looking ahead. She knows what this dude planed for her. Maybe she’s made peace with it, or maybe she’s just too old to do anything about it.

I try and let it go, you know, go about the business of the day, but it’s eating me up inside. I go to see Nunez, but now I’m feeling old, older than the doc ever tried to make me feel. Nunez serves up that dead-black Turkish coffee he goes crazy for, but the smell alone makes my stomach go paper.

“Tea, Nunez!” I say. “Just goddamned a cup of tea!” And he pretends like he doesn’t understand or can’t hear me, the same as he’s been doing since I’ve known him.

I’m sat down on his horrible couch and I’m stuck there. I’ve been stuck to more than a few couches in my day, but usually due to an excess of narcotics, which is much more pleasurable than the combination of bad springs and failing knees.

I say to Nunez, “When are you going to toss this thing into the East River?” But he’s playing around with those little birds he keeps, laughing to himself about God-know-what.

I’m stuck on this couch and all I can think about is this goddamned bay horse that’s headed for the glue factory. It tumbles around in my mind like a sickness. How can there even be glue factories that use old horses?! It doesn’t figure, so I fight my way off that goddamned couch and pay a call to the Anti-Cruelty Society there on 91st. This weird little dude with frameless glasses set me straight.

“It’s not a glue factory per se,” he goes, “but there are more than a few rendering facilities that will process large animal carcasses.

“But this horse is pulling a carriage around the park as we stand and speak! It can’t be in that bad of shape!”

“Maybe, but based on how much money this sort of

enterprise can make and what it costs to house and feed a horse, this doesn’t surprise me in the least.”

So now I’m beside myself. Even the Anti-Cruelty man seems cruel. It’s supposed to be this wonderful fall day, and the weather agrees, clear and cool, the whole city snapping to make you think like maybe you could live in Canada. Vancouver maybe, at least for a little while. But inside me there’s a black yearning that I haven’t known for years, and I know something must be done about it.

As with any black yearning that can't be ignored, the first move is to secure the greens. And I’m not proud of how I did it, and frankly I don’t think I should have to include unsavory details in my own will, but in case there’s a question as to the legality of the purchase, I want it known that indeed, I was able to make the dough.

On the advice of the Man, I’ve always kept a small taste of the old boy stashed very discreetly in the pad. Anyone who’s reading this will knows that my first few attempts to kick were both unsuccessful and undignified. In the end, we learned some guys can just kick on their own and some guys need a death scare and a stay at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Regardless, by 19 and 78, I was clean.

I was advised by many to disassociate myself from the Man, which I did not do. The Man has been a source of many things over the years, not just chemistry, and far too precious to cut loose. Once I kicked, and once he was certain that this was the case, he promised he would only provide to me one more package, and that it would come to me free of charge.

“This is for the End,” he told me. “For when the darkness comes. Wait on it. Keep it far from sight.”

“Yeah, no problem,” I said, taking the package and silently calculating its weight.

It wasn't the first time I'd guessed the Man might have the ability to peer inside one's soul, because on seeing me handle the package, he walked slowly to an end table and produced a handgun and pointed it at me.

"Hey, easy, brother!"

“If I find out you didn’t wait for the End, Harry, I’ll bring the End to you.”

“Right, right,” I said. “I got it.”

As I had for decades prior, I did what the Man advised and hid the package in the floorboards. I’ve thought about it more than a few times since then, but today was the first time I laid hands on the package in twenty-five years.

Even if he was still on the scene, I would never move the package through the Man. After all he’d done for me, it would be betrayal to hand this back to him and ask for cash.

Instead, I pull on a guy Nunez knows, and I had to do it without telling Nunez, either. It was an ugly couple of hours, waiting by pay phones in a manner that I had long been through with.

He finds me on Hudson at 11th street in a shining Oldsmobile. He inspects the contents of the package, various powders and pills. I take the sheet of instructions the Man had written for me and stuff it in my pocket.

“Sweet Christ,” he says. “We’re looking at the collector’s edition here!” I admit that I’d had it for a while, but had been assured that none of it should go bad.

“They haven’t manufactured half this shit in over a decade,” the dude goes on in amazement.

All told, I'm able to come up with nearly $1800 in cash. It turns out that in the mind of the Man, the End wasn’t a short passage chirped by the failing, but a chapter to be poured over, devoured and digested. The End wasn’t an hour, it was a week, maybe more, in which there was much to be done.

It's near dark by the time I make it back up to the park. I wait down on 58th street where the carriage guys collect, and I see her come around the curve. Her last passengers, an Oriental couple, step down and thank the driver. I approach before I can think better.

The driver listens to my appeal, which though I've practiced, comes out foamy mouthed and weird. He's thinking I'm just another park mayor, a bum, until I show him the cash.

“Get in,” he says.

I sit up next to him in the carriage as the horse makes her final return to the barn. He tells me all these stories about her, about where he’d gotten her and fares they’d had. He’d been driving her for four years and worried about this day from the start.

“She’s always been slow, which is bad for business. These tourists get in and they’re thinking a half hour they’ll be around the park. Instead they make it up to the Met, maybe, speed walkers zooming past.” He laughs a little, then chokes something back.

“Goddamn it,” he says, shaking his head.

He lets me have the horse for a song, hundreds less than he would have gotten from the glue factory, so I still had a pretty thick wad of cash left over. We do the deal in her final steps to the carriage house.

I wait as he undoes the straps and gives her a final brush. She's the first in. The other horses work far deeper into the night. The carriage house is quiet but for her breathing. He walks her towards me.

“She’s called Juniper,” he says. “Take care of her.”

The carriage man hands me her lead, and just like that, she's mine. I pet her nose and she looks at me. She wouldn’t look at any of those guys petting her that morning, but she looks at me.

Then the carriage man starts moving quickly. “Okay,” he says, “good luck.”

He makes to leave, and I grab his coat and say, “Hey, easy up, amigo. What am I supposed to do with her?”

“That’s for you to figure out, pal. I had it arranged.”

“What arranged?”

“I was set to drop her tonight on my way to Maryland. I’m picking up her replacement there tomorrow. I don’t know what to tell you but good luck.” He got in his truck and started his engine.

I say, “But look, I don’t think she’ll fit through my door.” He's not listening. He's a new man, freed and forgiven, on the road to something new. Juniper and I are nothing more than old ghosts.

Some frantic calls are made from the pay phone on 59th. Thank God for my old partner Jim. He and I used to confer on art happenings (at one of which appeared John and Yoko!) Now he lives with his wife Carol up in Stottville, along the Hudson, there. Got some land and a horse of their own, so they have the trailer.

I thought Jim would dig on why I’d bought this horse, but instead it's over and over with, “Jesus, Harry! You can’t just do stuff like this! What were you thinking?!” On and on like that. I don''t know what to say back. I just keep telling him that I need his help, and that I have some dough for his troubles. He finally relents, and we make a plan to meet near a BQE off-ramp.

I lead that horse all the way over the Triborough bridge. Night came as it does here, with the darkness gathering around the edges of the city, the curbs and the bushes, only to be fought off by the street lights and the buildings. But it's quieter to me, much quieter. Maybe it's because I'm so focused on listening to Juniper’s hooves beat out this old song on the pavement. I never had much to do with horses. Rode a few back when I was a kid at summer camp, but never felt particularly akin.

But there's this song Juniper's playing on the street with her hooves. I always thought horses just went “clack clack clack clack” across the world, but it turns out that there’s subtle accents in place, ancient rhythms intact in their feet. Juniper’s walk makes a song like, “Pomp. Pa-did-a-do. Domp. Pa-dee-do. Pomp.”

She plays that mother slow as a dirge and twice as sad, and it suddenly occurs to me I’ve been trying to sing this song my whole life. I don't know how else to say it, but it's the song that I am, and she's singing it to me with her feet. She's beating it out on the streets, the streets I've been stuck to like a magnet for sixty-five years. Then it hits me. If I never find a way to sing this song my own self, it's okay, because at least I’ve heard it.

We make it over the bridge and to the off-ramp, where we wait about three hours. I wish we could keep walking, because listening to the traffic is nothing like listening to Juniper walk, but we have to stay put.

Jim refuses talk to me the whole drive up, which is fine, because I'm worried about Juniper back there in the trailer. I know she’s ridden around plenty in her life, but I'm worried maybe Jim’s trailer smells funny to her, doesn't know where she's going, and that she's scared. I keep trying to send her good thoughts, but Jim’s negative energy makes it hard.

We get to Stottville well after dark. Thank God for Carol. She leads Juniper to the stable and when I tell her the story of buying her from the carriage-man, she starts to cry. Jim's still on about who's going to pay for her care, the oats and the vet and all that, but Carol hits him in the chest pretty hard and he clams up.

We eat some dinner and they let me spend the night in their kid’s old room. The bed's really soft and there's a whole stack of comics to read, but I can't relax for to save my soul.

There's not much talk at breakfast. I guess I started something between Jim and Carol. I lay the envelope of cash on the table, but no one touches it. Carol just says thanks, and assures me Juniper will be fine.

We leave Jim to sulk and walk out to the barn together. She says she’d have to ask the vet, but she was pretty sure Juniper still had at least few good years left in her. With the timeline the doc keeps pressing on me, it looks like our timing might work out just fine.

Juniper looks like she passed the night just fine. The quarters are a little makeshift, but Carol says they’ll spiff em up. Carol leaves and I pet the horse for a while. Then she takes a step forward and presses her neck against me. I put my arms around her and I breath her in. There's no more city smell in her hide. Just that musty twinge of the country. We stay like that a long while, me and Juniper, a couple old fools who'd walked circles around Manhattan, tired now, and together.

Stottville isn’t too far, but it’s out of reach of the Fairlane, so I take the train up there every once in a while. I bring dough for Jim and Carol. It’s a real belt-tightener, but what can you do? Whatever dust was kicked up by Juniper’s arrival seems to have settled. You can’t ride her, but she lets me lead her through some of the paths up there and I listen to that old song she makes when she walks. It’s different on dirt, but it still hits me the same.

Man. I just got a look from this lawyer dude that would stop a clock. It’s not like anyone else is waiting to use this goddamn perfect typewriter. Everyone’s on their computers doing their lawyer gag and all that. Shee-yeesh. Okay, I get it. On with the will.

I hereby decree Ron, you can have all the stuff in my pad. Anything you can pick up and take out, that’s yours.

Angel, once Ron cleans that baby out, I want you to take up the lease. From what I understand, it ain’t easy to get a two bedroom joint in lower Manhattan anymore. I don’t know if you can swing the $570 in rent, but it’s covered by the old laws, which were the only laws that ever did me any good.

There’s nothing in the bank but $30 that’s been there since 1955. Any cash you’re going to find stashed in the freezer, and that goes to Juniper. The Fairlane, too. Sell it for oats.

And that’s it. You know, I got a lot of hassle about never getting married or finding steady work, and I get it. I cramped some style. I hurt people. I’m sorry for that. If you’re still looking for the reason why, I guess just go up and visit that old horse and take her for a walk.

It wasn’t the End that the Man had planned for me, but I think he’d be okay with this one, too.

PRINTED NAME ___________________________

SIGNED __________________  

Date ____________________

WITNESSED BY_______________  _______________

_______________ ______________

_______________ ______________

The Last Will and Testament

of Harry Roucheau

by Clay Allen